How many friends do you have?

My dad once expressed to me that if, after you have departed this life, your neighbours remembered you as a good person who did harm to no one, that was as much as you needed to ask for.

He also said if I amassed five close friends in my lifetime, I would be richly blessed.

I admired my father a lot and have tried to walk in his footprints.

A self-educated, successful Ward of the County, he wasn’t a warm and fuzzy guy, but you would have liked to have had him as friend. He was funny, too, though he didn’t know it.

I have managed to hold onto a number of strong, long-lasting friendships.

I have three friends I went to school with who I still see regularly, even though we live 3,500 miles apart, and two long-time radio friends with whom I am in constant contact.

Is there a formula for the perfect friendship?

A report on social and personal relationships from the University of Kansas seems to think so.

Jeffrey Hall analyzed 355 people and worked out how long it takes to graduate from acquaintance, to casual friend, to friend, and then close friend.

On average, he says it takes 50 hours to go from acquaintance to casual friend — the sort of people you’re glad to see across a room at a party.

Ninety hours is the tipping point where you start to make time to see one another.

When you get to 200 hours, you are proper intimates; you see each other socially and support each other emotionally.

A friend surprised me a couple of weeks ago when we were sharing a table at Timmy’s and he said to me, “I could never tell So-andSo things I tell you about my life.”

It surprised me because I always thought of So-and-So as a closer friend to him than I am, even though he and I coffee regularly. Some things are unpredictable.

Hall’s study went on to suggest the number of meaningful relationships we can have in our lives is around 150.

That comes from what’s known as “Dunbar’s Number.”

He divided this number into groups of five close friends, 15 good friends, 50 general acquaintances, building to a circle limited to about 150.

Dunbar claimed that 150 was all the brain’s neocortex could process.

I don’t think Dunbar is/was on Facebook.

Studies also show our circle of friends peaks when we’re about 25 years old and the numbers drop off after that. Remember: you can’t pick your family, but you can pick your friends.

Fred Trainor is a retired broadcaster. He lives in Okanagan Falls. Email: fredtrainor@shaw.ca